ReportCrash full CPU, ReportCrash entries in Console

[klaus]

On a Mac (OS X 10.8.2) with administrative and standard user accounts after some permission changes some strange things appeared when logging in to the standard user account:

• The top menubar was gone

• Finder did not start

• In the dock the application folder was missing

After starting an Application from the dock the top menu bar appeared and console was accessible over spotlight.
In Console were endless messages like:

Code: Select all

4/24/13 8:48:22.743 AM	ReportCrash[13209]	       0x10acf1000 -        0x10b1abfff  com.apple.finder (10.8.2 - 10.8.2) <4EFE55E7-5DDB-35A9-8FB1-A20E88E74799> /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
4/24/13 8:48:22.743 AM	ReportCrash[13209]	    0x7fff6a8f1000 -     0x7fff6a92593f  dyld (210.2.3) <36CAA36E-72BC-3E48-96D9-B96A2DF77730> /usr/lib/dyld
4/24/13 8:48:22.743 AM	ReportCrash[13209]	    0x7fff873f7000 -     0x7fff873fbfff  libpam.2.dylib (20) <C8F45864-5B58-3237-87E1-2C258A1D73B8> /usr/lib/libpam.2.dylib
4/24/13 8:48:22.743 AM	ReportCrash[13209]	    0x7fff87453000 -     0x7fff874adfff  com.apple.print.framework.PrintCore (8.3 - 387.2) <5BA0CBED-4D80-386A-9646-F835C9805B71> /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/PrintCore.framework/Versions/A/PrintCore
4/24/13 8:48:22.744 AM	ReportCrash[13209]	    0x7fff87734000 -     0x7fff8773aff7  libunwind.dylib (35.1) <21703D36-2DAB-3D8B-8442-EAAB23C060D3> /usr/lib/system/libunwind.dylib

A glance to the activity monitor showed ReportCrash using over 100% CPU usage.

The misery was caused by wrong permissions for the /Users Folder.
Everyone was set to 'No access' after changing it back to 'read only' the problems were gone.
Maybe booting to the recovery partition
and using the reset password.app

Code: Select all

cd "/Volumes/Mac OS X Base System/Applications/Utilities/Reset Password.app/Contents/MacOS"
./"Reset Password"

could also have solved the problem.
In general it is not very good to change the permissions of a system folder, but sometimes shit happens.